Schooling is possibly one of the most difficult topics on which to write an objective article. Experts, specialists, and professionals are in abundance to comment on the pros and cons of our modern school experiment, but it is doubtful that any of them can provide any more insight to the argument of schooling's usefulness than the millions of people who have spent over a decade of their natural lives compelled to go to school each day. Anyone who spends thirteen or more years engaged in a certain activity, whether it be school, playing basketball, or operating a forklift, can be considered an expert in his or her field, confident enough to speak about the subject and inform others of the intricacies of the activity. Why, then, do so few people seem able to think critically about the function of school in our modern society? Some of the answers to this question lie in the idea of compulsory schooling and the mass production global economy.

Until it became a forced activity for the entire child population, school was considered important for those who wanted to go. For the children to did not want to sit in a classroom, being instructed by a teacher, there were simply other ways of learning. This may have involved working in the family business, becoming an apprentice of a local craft worker, or children, such as Benjamin Franklin, simply learning on their own. Most times, education in lieu of schooling involved young people asking questions of the world around them and going to work to find the answers. School was one route to understanding the world, but it was not considered the only viable solution. Nowhere but in America in its earliest decades of independence was such a large majority of ordinary people educated, literate, and able to understand complex concepts.

It was this widespread literacy and ability to think critically, however, that caused such concern for the early modern economists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. People who were able to think for themselves and could persuade others presented a valid threat to the idea that people should risk their lives crawling through dirty coal mines, working for pennies in dangerous textile mills, or even spend a meaningless life answering phones in an office. Workers who were aware of the destitution of their lives were much more likely to rise up and demand fair treatment, rather than proceed indifferently with their empty lives and unhappy existences.

Thus, a project had to be created to keep children from learning about themselves and their world, and would instead teach them to conform to a superior and look at everything in life with the same indifference that they were later to use when examining their jobs. The obvious solution was a mass schooling experiment that compelled parents to send their children away until they had been molded into efficient workers and half-completed human beings. The very fact that school is a forced activity should explain nearly everything about the institution that is necessary to understand. The modern tools of the modern schools, as well, give some indication as to their purposes in controlling and directing the development of other people's children

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